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A great bargain at just £24.99

My son always wanted to be in the kitchen when I was cooking dinner and started throwing tantrums when I told him it wasn't safe, so we came up with the idea of giving him his own kitchen so he could "pretend" to be cooking while I was doing the real thing.

We looked at various kitchen's including the Early Learning Centre version, and were a bit miffed by the cost - some costing around £70. Then we came across this kitchen and thought all our Christmases had come at once. It cost £24.99 and is a real bargain!!

There is a double oven, a 2 ring hob, a griddle, shelves, utensils, a kettle, pots and pans, even a tap that works!!

The hobs light up and make sounds as if a pot is boiling on, and there is an oven timer that works.

The kitchen comes in different colours - the one we have is red and yellow, with a black griddle.

My son now loves pretending to cook and comes up with some fantastic concoctions. The pots and pans are all easy to use, fit nicely on the cooker, and the hooks are perfect for the utensils.

The only problem I have come across with this kitchen is that the oven door is a bit difficult to open so I have to be close at hand while he's playing. It has certainly stopped the tantrums while I'm in the kitchen so is definitely worth the £24.99.

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a great budget toy kitchen

My daughter loves making cups of tea for us, so when she was given a second tea set for her birthday, we decided to spend some of her birthday money and buy her a kitchen. There are so many on the market, varying greatly in price, so the choice wasn't easy.My friend's daughter has one from ELC but I knew that it cost around £70. I didn't really want to spend that much on one despite knowing it was sturdy and my daughter loved it. After looking around and reading reviews here, I decided upon the Toys R Us Just like Home kitchen because it has sounds, and it was on offer at the time making it a bargain.

For £39.99 you get a large box with a diy plastic kitchen hiding inside. This kitchen also has a proper working tap if you so choose to let your toddler play with water. (I thought not at this stage and as yet my daughter doesn't realise this can be done and is good enough for me at the moment). The function of the working tap is a novel idea, but to be honest I think the placement of it is too near the battery compartment to make anything fool proof for a toddler. The sounds that come from the kitchen are worth more to me that playing with water near the batteries.

Once built the kitchen is fairly small and seems to fit nicely into our lounge without taking up too much space. It's very unisex in colour designed in blue, yellow and red, so no girly pink here which is quite nice for a change.The unit itself consists of a large oven at the bottom, with a hob and draining board to the sides. Placed on top is a centre column with three shelves and hooks for utensils. Overall the top bit is fairly wobbly, but is evened out by the base oven, and can withstand a toddler playing easily.

As I mentioned there are sounds along with the kitchen. The hob is designed to recognise either the saucepan or the kettle when you place then on the front hob. Little lights also flash. There are two flaws to this design, the first being it doesn't always recognise the correct pot, so you may get a whistle when the saucepan is on, and the second is that sometimes the button can get stuck in so the sound carries on for ages which can get a bit annoying.Overall however, my daughter loves the sounds and provided there is no sticking, the noise doesn't last too long as she thinks she is boiling me some water etc for food.All this needs four AA batteries which are provided when you buy the kitchen and placed in a compartment which sits underneath the draining board area. Unfortunately the lid is easily removed and whilst the battery top needs a screwdriver, it's still a bit of a fault in the design for me.

The working tap should you wish to use this function, which no doubt I will have to do when my daughter gets older and wiser to me, is operated from the side of the kitchen. The tap is a little push down area where you press, and when the pipe is connected inside the kitchen from the tap to the reservoir that you can fill, a trickle of water will come out into the sink on the side of the kitchen.

The oven door opens down not to the side which my daughter struggles with occasionally. Sometimes she stands on the door as she is trying to put something in the oven. Being plastic I worry she'll break it, but so far it's withstood her weight and I'm training her not to stand on it.To close the door there are two little connection points that hold once the door is pushed shut. This does require both side to connect otherwise it'll fall open again. This has happened to us on many occasions and I see a bewildered two year old looking around. There is a shelf in the oven that rests on two little edges either side. Sadly the fit isn't great and any pressure sees the shelf fall down. We find that you don't really need the shelf so it usually sits on the floor of the oven and we use this as a base for our pans.

With the kitchen you get some cutlery, pots and pans to get you started, along with a small selection of play food. We also bought an extra set of food when we bought the kitchen, so my daughter has plenty to play with as there isn't a great deal included, but enough to get you started.

Overall despite the little flaws, I think we got a bargain. To me the true test of a toy is what my daughter thinks, and she has played with this kitchen every day since June, and that tells me she loves it, so I would recommend it to anyone.It has also helped us teach her various safety aspects of being in the kitchen such as burning and t run your hand under cold water etc when touching hot things by accident. It has also helped us to learn colours of foods, and placing different foods in dishes and placing in the oven. She recognises lots of different vegetables etc through playing with the kitchen so all in all a great buy.

I would have been really happy paying the full price for this but we managed to get it for £24.99 so even better.

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Great value for money and fun for the child

This little item of joy for my child was, what I believed to be, excellent value for money when I bought it for £39.99. It was, and still is, well worth the money and now has come down to just £24.99 so is an absolute steal at the moment. There are a number of little kitchen units for toddlers, but I believe this to be the best based on looking around at the time and the enjoyment that my 2 year old daughter has got from it.

This was the perfect present for her as it enabled her to do what she loves to do best... copy me and this allowed her to do so in a safe way. She loves role play too and this toy has options in abbundance for that. With alot of these kitchen toys, you tend to just get the basic shell of a kitchen with a cooker, hobs and maybe a microwave, but with this you get so much more in the form of visual and audio interaction. Not only does my daughter get all the enjoyment out of making her mummy and daddy a cup of tea or maybe a pie in the oven, she also gets the enjoyment of further believing it through the lights and sounds that are activated by certain actions, like opening and closing the oven and runnin the tap water. Curiously, she has no interest in washing up though, must have been watching daddy in the kitchen too!!!

Added to the obvious, you also get shelves, a timer and other little utensils that enhance the realism from her role playing point of view. Whilst obviously keeping the child in question entertained, I also recommend this to parents as a way of teaching your child and sitting back and simply enjoying seeing how they interact with what they see as the same thing as you do.

The item itself is made really well and now, 7 months on, shows no signs of coming apart or breaking in any way. There may be the odd spoon uinder the couch now, but nothing has broken. All pieces are of a decent size to never be considered a choke hazzard and overall, the price is really fair and even more so now at the reduced rate.

If you have a 2 or 3 year old, you could do a lot worse than this for role play and fun for them.

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Great value for the price

I bought my son the Cheapest Little cooks kitchen for his second birthday from Argos but as it kept falling apart (see review) I decided to buy my son a better quality play kitchen but as my finance is limited I couldn't afford a luxury one.

I decided to buy the just like home kitchen from toys r us as it was on offer down from £39.99 to £24.99.

The kitchen has a large oven, a stove which makes boiling and cooking noises, shelves with a clock at the top and quite a few accessories including: eggs, sausage and vegetables to cook pans and a kettle.

It states for thee years and over.

My Experience

I found it online and was hoping that they would have one on display in store but they only had the more expensive models displayed.

I had my son with me in his buggy so it was quite difficult to carry a big bulky box to the till and steer the buggy.

This is one item I decided to build with the help of my two year old. I put the TV on for him so that he had a bit of a distraction and wasn't interfering constantly.

The box itself is a great distraction as it was large enough for him to crawl into.

The instructions to assemble are quite simple to follow. It only requires a screwdriver to screw in the battery which is included. I was able to build it in just over ten minutes which with the help of my son was pretty impressive. The tap has a pipe that connects to the drain and this was a little fiddly to connect and I am not sure of the point of it

This kitchen is blue and yellow so much more of a unisex colour than his previous kitchen.

My son set about immediately cooking with his new pans and started by frying a pepper. The sounds are not annoying to me and do make the kitchen seem more realistic. The oven is large the shelf could do with been very slightly larger as it can fall down with too much pressure is put on it. I do like the fact hat there is a hole in the base of the oven which was especially useful when my son put a cup of water on the cooker shelf and then knocked it over.

It has a yellow teapot with a blue lid and this is the biggest weakness in the product. The lid doesn't seem to fit well and with slightly too much pressure it falls into the tea pot and it can often take me quite a few attempts to balance it. On the positive side when you out it on the stove it makes a whistling noise as the kettle boils.

The set comes with two plastic cups, plates and bowls. I have been made many imaginary cups of tea with this kettle and as he helps make my cup of tea in a morning he is very proud of these cups of tea. He will not drink any of my tea but does enjoy an imaginary cup of tea with me. He quite often will out food he is given such as crisps fruit and cereal into the pans to fry and out in the oven to cook which means I have loads of washing up created even from a small snack. I now also have two cookers to wipe over most evenings.

The grill just lays into a space and my son will regularly just throw that part off which revels where the battery is covered. I think this is partly as it is not familiar as opposed to the other parts that remind him of mommy's cooker.

My son plays with this every day so I and has not broken any part of it in two weeks. He does however at times open the oven door then stand on it to get to the stove which I have to prompt him to get off and I think that if any part breaks it will bet through him standing on the oven door.

I am very happy with this product for the price I paid. It is not as sturdy as the little Tikes kitchens but then they are more expensive. Although it states for 3 years and over, I have no concerns with my son using it. As my son is tall for his age he can reach the top shelf but a shorter child may have some difficulty.

If you do not want to spend more on a sturdier kitchen then I would recommend this one